Workman Publishing Company founder, Peter Workman, 74, died of cancer on Sunday, April 7 at his home in New York. As noted in the recent announcement of management change in the running of Workman Publishing, he had suffered from the disease since last fall. In addition to serving as president and ceo of the publishing company, Workman was chairman of the board of governors of Yale University Press and served on the boards of the Goddard-Riverside Community Center and Prep-for-Prep, and he was a member of the Publishing Committee of UJA-Federation of New York. As a company announcement recounts: “He […]
Personnel
People, Etc.
Christian Trimmer will join Simon & Schuster Children’s as senior editor on April 15. Previously he was senior editor at Disney-Hyperion. Wah-Ming Chang has joined Melville House as managing editor. Previously she was a production manager at FSG. In addition, Alex Shephard has been named director of digital marketing, as well as managing editor of the publisher’s MobyLives blog. Shephard is editor-in-chief of online literary magazine Full Stop. At Random House, Jennifer Javier has been promoted to regional sales manager, International Sales, covering Indonesia and the Philippines. Javier will be based in Manila. At Hachette Book Group, Ali Coughlin has been […]
People, Etc.
Lisa Vanterpool has joined Inkwell Literary Management as public relations & social media strategist. Previously she was at Blake Friedmann, where she focused on strategic social media development and publicity. At the Simon & Schuster imprint, Emily Graff has been named associate editor. Ann Hulbert will join the Atlantic as books & culture editor in June, the Observer reports, as part of an attempt “to beef up their culture coverage and help expand and re-envision their online book coverage.” Hulbert was previously an editor at Slate and the New Republic and is currently a Spencer Fellow at Columbia Journalism School. George […]
People, Awards, Etc.
Author Iain Banks reported in a statement that he has inoperable late-stage metastatic gall bladder cancer and is “extremely unlikely” to live for more than another year. “So it looks like my latest novel, The Quarry, will be my last…. Meanwhile my heroic publishers are doing all they can to bring the publication date of my new novel forward by as much as four months, to give me a better chance of being around when it hits the shelves.” At Little, Brown Children’s, Pam Gruber has been promoted to associate editor. At McGill-Queen’s University Press, Susan McIntosh has been promoted to associate director. Berlin-based […]
People, Etc.
The new controlling owners of the Agatha Christie estate have signed with William Morris Endeavor for exclusive representation of all facets of the estate, “expanding its reach across television, film and digital media.” Acorn Productions acquired the 64 percent stake in Agatha Christie Ltd that had been owned by Chorion in February 2012, calling it “the most important deal in the company’s history.” The Agatha Christie family owns the remaining 36 percent. Christie’s literary works include over 80 novels and short story collections and 19 plays, which they say continue to sell at a rate of over three million books per year […]
People, Awards, Etc.
Judges have been announced for this year’s National Book Awards, the first time that the prizes expand their judging ranks beyond exclusively writers to include other literary tastemakers. The fiction judges include Elliott Bay Book Company buyer Rick Simonson and former NYTBR editor Chip McGrath (who chairs the panel), along with Charles Baxter, Gish Jen and Rene Steinke. The nonfiction panel features former Harcourt publisher and current vp of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Andre Bernard, alongside Jabari Asim; M.G. Lord; Lauren Redniss; and Eric Sundquist. The young people’s literature panel includes Books of Wonder owner Peter Glassman and curator […]